This was given at the Oxville, Florence, and Detroit (IL) UMC’s (YES, I did some Driving that Sunday!! Fortunately, the drawbridge at Florence (IL) was Down! 🙂 ) on March 2, 2003, the Sunday that many churches would have considered as ‘Transfiguration Sunday’ for that year. I have Always felt it was a Powerful Message!

The Scripture is from Mark 9:2-10… 

Right across from the Wal-Mart in Jacksonville, there are two state-blue signs. One of them talks about Stephen Douglas and his connections to Jacksonville, while the other talks about Jacksonville itself, and about Illinois College. Out at the Morgan County fairgrounds there is another sign… it tells how Ulysses S. Grant camped there with his men before heading south to battle. In downtown Alton one can see the remnants of a stone wall with a sign telling how it was all that was left of the Federal prison used during the Civil war to hold prisoners-of-war until they were all transferred to the ‘new’ prison in Joliet.

During a visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, a few years ago, my (then) wife and I stumbled upon a very large, very old steel cage that was open to the public. Inside were signs telling how it had been the home of Chicago’s most famous gorilla, Bushman, and told of the hundreds-of-thousands of people who had come to the zoo to see him over the years. It also told how he was now on display at the Field Museum. Now, we’ve been there a few times as well, but I didn’t remember any special gorilla being on exhibit. So when we went there with the Wesley Chapel youth group last year I made it a point to look for it. Sure enough, the gorilla display that I had seen each time we’d been there also had a small sign noting his name and some of the same information that was at the zoo. Now, I am sure that there are people who go to the Field Museum with the intent of seeing Bushman, but until we stumbled upon that old cage, neither of us had ever heard of him.

However, it is a different story at the St. Louis Zoo. I remember going there during a Christmas Study as a teenager in the late ‘60’s and reading the information on Phil. Phil was their big gorilla who had recently died and been given a special place of honor near to where his cage had been. After reading the information placards, I realized that this had to be the gorilla that I would have seen during my visits as a child. I don’t really know why, but I found myself choking up about that! Over the years he was moved indoors to a wing that he shared with a display of porcelain birds, then to a prominent position at the entrance to the Children’s Zoo, then moved to a not-so-prominent location in the Children’s Zoo, until finally he was taken off display altogether.

Now, all of these things that I have mentioned have one very important point in common…at some point in time somebody felt that each of them were important enough to preserve their memory for future generations. The problem is that generally, the future generations loose interest and forget anyway! Of all of the things that I mentioned, the only thing that I can give you any detail about is Phil at the St. Louis Zoo…and that is because it is the only thing that affected me personally. That’s not to say that I’m not interested in the gorilla at Chicago, or in the history of Jacksonville…I am! But the thing that I will remember the longest is the thing that I had a personal relationship to! And if that holds true for everybody, then none of the generations after me will care to remember Phil the gorilla… because they never knew him. So, as time passes and those of us who do remember Phil pass on, he will be completely forgotten except by those responsible for trying to preserve what is left of him, until even that is left undone because nobody will remember why he should be preserved.

In today’s verses, Peter wanted to put up some kind of physical sign of what had just happened. Not that he wasn’t, maybe, justified in feeling that way! Try to imagine what he and the others were seeing. First of all, here’s Moses, who represented Jewish law… and Elijah… their greatest prophet! Both men had actually seen God. And here they were, standing with Jesus… their ‘heavenly’ bodies glowing, while Jesus’ is transformed… transfigured… into Holy radiance! Who wouldn’t think to try to preserve that moment for all posterity! But Jesus enjoined them to not even TELL anyone until after He had risen from the grave!

Some think that Jesus used this moment to verify who and what He is… and to mark the end of the old order… the Mosaic way of doing things… and the beginning of the new…the way of Christianity!

Well, first of all, from the very beginning God has been against creating any kind of image. The second commandment says…”You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. So that part of it is very obvious. But even more than that, Jesus knew human nature.

The book of Joshua tells of a time when the Israelites were camped on the bank of the Jordan River. On the other side was the Promised Land… the land of milk and honey. The Jordan was at flood stage, yet as soon as the feet of the priests who carried the ark touched the water’s edge, the water stopped flowing. The priests stood on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing. The LORD told Joshua to choose twelve men, one from each tribe, to take up twelve stones from right where the priests stood.

We pick the story up in chapter 4, verse 20;

And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan .He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their fathers, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the LORD your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The LORD your God did to the Jordan just what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over.”

God performs a miracle… and not just a miracle that that only one person, or two or three, are aware of. The entire Israelite nation crosses over on dry ground into the land promised to them by God. Everyone experienced it! Everyone knew it as a fact! Their God was real! And at God’s direction they established a monument to mark the occasion. So what do you suppose happens? Let’s move up to the next book in the story. In Judges chapter 2 verse 8 we read…

After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt.

So here we are… one generation later… and nobody remembers God! Later on during one of their ‘faithful’ periods, we’re told that the people rebuild the alter at Gilgal, only to have it forgotten yet again down the road. Jesus knew this. And he knew that building any kind of physical representation was useless.

On another of our trips to Chicago a few years ago, we saw, from some distance away, a magnificent bronze horse and uniformed rider sitting atop a large stone arch, and decided to walk over and take a closer look. However, the closer that we got, the less impressed we became. The pigeons and Lake Michigan had both been working their wonders for some years, apparently undisturbed. And even though it had been encased with rolls of fencing to try to keep people off and away from it, different gangs had taken turns trying to immortalize themselves on the archway. Even up close, neither of us recognized the rider, and though we walked completely around the stonework, and searched the surrounding area for any markers, we never could find out who he was! Now, it is obvious that at one time, somebody thought that he was very important… in fact an awful lot of somebodies had to think that in order to raise the monies necessary to commission this work. And it must have been within the last hundred years, and may well have been fifty or less. Yet here my wife and I stood and couldn’t even determine who it was!

Has God’s Church stood the test of time… is it as alive and vibrant today as when Christ stood on this earth and established it? Or has it become little more than a monument… headed for oblivion in the minds of people of the world? It has been said that Christianity is within one generation of disappearing. And that is very true. Unless we do our part to spread the news about the love of Jesus, Christianity could well disappear shortly after we are all gone! Our church buildings will be empty… our Bibles unread. No hymnals will be opened, no songs will be sung. All of the art created… the beautiful paintings, tapestries, and statues… will be studied and admired, but nobody will remember who they are or why they were important. God’s plan for humanity… for the salvation of mankind… will have failed. All because we failed in passing that knowledge on to the next generation.

We are the caretakers of Christianity. We are the caretakers of the memory of the Lord. And it is our responsibility to see to it that EVERYONE is aware of who and what Christ is, and why that is important! If all we do is take a little time to ‘dust off the relics’ of our Christianity then Christianity will surly disappear with us. Are you willing to let that happen?